Doctoral Studies Research Students Forum – 2013 Archive

Thursday 13 June

Keynote: Pre-early career: priorities for research students

The backgrounds from which students come to university, the career, civic, and personal goals they pursue through their work at university, the ways in which they are accustomed to learning, and the professional settings that await them on graduation, have become more diverse and complex. Also it is increasingly the case that doctoral graduates enter fields other than university teaching and research – including research-based fields in both the private and public sectors. Further, there are recent developments in the global research environment that are relevant to its consideration of research training and supervision (RTS), including increased competition between countries, universities, and faculties, the changing clientele for graduate research studies, and emerging practices in research in the social sciences. So what are the basic ingredients that students should be looking for in their RTS? This presentation will address that question by drawing on some international approaches to RTS and on the school’s recent review of RTS, chaired by Professor Freebody. The review stressed the importance of providing students with both opportunities to create new knowledge through both instruction and immersion in a field of study, and structured experiences and apprenticeships to active and experienced researchers. The recommendations of this review will form the starting point for the presentation. The session will include time for questions and discussion.

Peter Freebody is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia with interests in literacy education, educational disadvantage, classroom interaction and research methodology. He has authored or edited 10 books and over 20 research reports to government. He has published in international journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, Harvard Educational Review, American Educational Research Journal and the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. He has also contributed numerous invited entries in international handbooks and encyclopedias on literacy, critical literacy, and research methodology. He has served on numerous Australian state and national advisory groups in the area of literacy education and curriculum design. He was evaluator of the Australian national on-line curriculum initiative conducted by the Australian Curriculum Corporation, a co-founder of the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice at the National Institute of Education, Singapore, and lead consultant in the development of the Australian English Curriculum. He has been a member of the New South Wales State Ministerial Advisory Group on Literacy and Numeracy. He is the Australian Commonwealth Government’s nominee on the National Literacy and Numeracy Expert Group, and a member of the Literacy Research Panel of the International Reading Association.